Some New York police officers, even those who respond to cases of antisemitic graffiti in Orthodox swaths of Brooklyn, don’t seem to know how to spell “swastika” or “yarmulke.” Surveillance cameras, even those in the subway, cannot always be relied upon to capture vandals who paint or carve hateful messages. And police officers frequently either fail to inform victims about their rights to seek compensation from the state, as is required by law, or fill out the related forms inaccurately. These are some of the things we learned combing through more than 1,800 pages of New York Police Department records on crimes referred to the Hate Crime Task Force because officers suspected anti-Jewish motivation in 2019. What we did not learn was what percentage of such crimes led to arrests and prosecution that year; whether the perpetrators or victims fell into any distinguishable demographic patterns; or how much worse antisemitic activity was across Brooklyn than it had been in prior years.